


Lament for Death

by crowroad



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Aftermath, Brotherly Love, Childhood Memories, Demon Blood, Episode Related, Episode s11e02 Form and Void, Illnesses, POV Sam Winchester, Prayer, Reapers, Season/Series 11, Sick Sam Winchester, Spiritual, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-15
Updated: 2015-10-15
Packaged: 2018-04-26 11:49:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5003686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowroad/pseuds/crowroad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A vessel is one thing; a void is another.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lament for Death

_Give me a virgin_

_Mary on the half-shell_

_when shadows fall on the lawn_

_and on the face of the earth_

_twilight like eternal_

_summer._ \--source unknown

 

 

There are prayers and there are prayers. This one's a lament.

Please, he says, please, and he means help us but when has he meant anything else, (when he isn't really praying for humanity after all, but what he always prays for.)

This one's a devotional.

*

“Sam,” Dean says, “you look terrible, man.”

Not feeling all that well either.” Roadhum travels upspine and vomit might be imminent, or violent chill of the post-trauma kind, where you shake and you shake until something salts it.

Burns it. Yeah that too.

“Yeah.” Dean's hand lifts from the wheel, lands, creeps neckward and tugs collar to flesh, to nothing, like he can see shadows of shadows, like he always could.

“Let's get you home.”

*

Drivetime is like the lullaby when you've sealed what you can you go back to the drawing road, bunker, board; little flares along the way and no sign; well, signs, but not that kind. 

You can stop it at the source, an outbreak, sometimes, but it'll snake a way, always.

Since when could Winchesters restore a natural order. Since when was there a natural order.

Any at all.

*

It's a night without god, without form.

Dean on his bed, habit, habit; doesn't think Sam's awake when he puts his phone to Sam’s face, for the light, when he breathes a little shine into void, when he sets a cold flare to Sam's pillow, when (not flashlight app, just phonelight) he touches Sam's forehead, like that--

maybe counts his breaths. 

Sunset reversed. Sunrise reversed. Disenfranchised deaths walking earths.

Sam has his dreams, has them, has always had them.

When the first dawn chorus. When the first dawn. The first crouchers-over-sparks, first holders-off, beholders…of tinder, kindling, accelerant. First heats, flamelicks. First star.

For Dad for Bobby for Charlie, all those pyres look at the flame; it could banish the world. 

Phosphorescence off.

“Sleep. You’re OK.”

*

No, unclean.

Toxins, transcriptases, demonic virology 101.

They crept up, the veins, that backflash to detox, in the mirror ( _bloody Mary bloody Mary bloody -_ -), devil-trapped below Bobby’s and hot for it, seeing the lace, lacinate, lacerate-- all those cognates true, false.

Sickness is an old friend, all kinds; the body, well, before it was the body it might have been -- all sick and no Sam--

A vessel is one thing; a void is another.

*

Get up. Pee. Mirror. Familiar. Haunted by hospitals and hell.

Shuffle back.

Kneel by the bed.

Supplication: _I can't carry my darkness anymore._

Sign: _Have you ever contained light?_

*

You need a benediction, boy.

You’re beautiful, for a reaper.

One of you, she said, sort of, has to wander alone, all those years ago and forever, drowned deep and forever lakeside without lake, heavenless without face, without form, bodiless, brotherless.

You—that won’t happen to you, Dean would say, I won’t let it. Still the same, after all. Put Cas to bloody bed. Pushed Sam past the burnable stacks, books, in this place in the dark dead center of them, of it all, the dead center of something very small: heart, state, Kansas, America, the continent the hemisphere the earth the universe; all so very very--

“Sam. You OK?”

We've-got-problems all over Dean's face, blood-on-hands problems, hell-king problems, what else is new--

what else is old.

*

Sam was small, once. 

Stood and tilted at a Dakota heaven and thought: _infinite_. First time trying on the word.

Dean tapped on his shoulder, flashed cash. Wanted to go to a movie. Sit in the dark with all the world contained, screened, all the action confined, all the monsters killable-laughable. _It's not real, Sammy._ When Sam cried once.  _It’s not real Sammy he’s not really dead._ Dad’ll be home, soon enough.

_Dean_. Death is real, death is dead, long live death.

End credits.

Lamentations.

*

Shattered lamps. Sunlight on pages. Splayed.

Breakfast: ugh.

Memory: whatever lives, has no life.

Whatever dies, has no death.

That sparrow outside the window. That baby. That child. 

“How're you feeling?”

That'll happen in the morning.

*

It's a night without god, without form.

Fitful. Bloody angel somewhere. 

Faint Dean-ness on the pillow. Wilderness.

A voice, smallish. Like marginalia, undamned gospel: 

_If you go to hell, well. If you've been there._

_I'll tell you, son._

_If you're gonna cast out demons,_

_you've got to cast light back in._

 


End file.
